Empirical Perspectives on the Psychoanalytic Unconscious: ( Empirical Studies of Psychoanalytical Theories, Vol.  7),  291 pp., $49.95; Empirical Studies of the Therapeutic Hour ( Empirical Studies of Psychoanalytical Theories, Vol.  8),  321 pp., $49.95. Both edited by Robert F. Bornstein and Joseph M. Masling. Washington, DC:  American Psychological Association, 1998.

The plural of anecdote is data.

We psychoanalysts occupy a position in scientific circles a bit like that of the 61 million pet owners in the United States. Armed with a wealth of anecdotal data, they are convinced that Fido and Fluffy can feel anger, jealousy, depression, joy, even embarrassment, but their anecdotal reports have not convinced scientific researchers.

In the past hundred years, psychoanalysts too have accumulated a wealth of case studies from which we have extrapolated a somewhat rickety, unwieldy, sprawling, and often internally inconsistent theory of mind, development, and clinical practice. The resulting discipline and its adherents' behavior have generated a history almost Fellini-esque in its passionate, idiosyncratic, brawling, and schismatic nature, the very reflection of the unruly human passions that are its object of study. At this point in our history, notions thought to be the bedrock of the discipline-drives, free association, the anonymity and neutrality of the analyst-are being challenged. Well, it's been a fun hundred years, but where do we go from here?

One answer is offered by the two volumes under review, both part of a series devoted to empirical studies in psychoanalysis. Editors Robert Bornstein and Joseph Masling propose to bridge the clinician-researcher gap by integrating clinical anecdotes and research data to provide enriched psychoanalytic models of mind and clinical practice.